


Be Better

by madeofheart (nerdofthenile)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Depression, Guilt, Narcissism, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, References to Canon-Typical Violence against children, Self-Harm, Service Dogs, Suicidal Thoughts, Therapy, These poor trolls
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-02-16
Packaged: 2021-03-14 07:26:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29292084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerdofthenile/pseuds/madeofheart
Summary: It's hard to miss youWhen you are always on the tip of my tongue, nowI feel like I'm looking for somethin'Somethin' that'll never come- "I've Been Waiting" by Lil Peep, ILoveMakonnen, FallOut Boy***"Do you think you're a bad person?""...'course.""I don't think so. I think you have issues that no one ever knew how to help you with."
Relationships: Eridan Ampora/Karkat Vantas
Comments: 1
Kudos: 7





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> guess who's back  
> back again
> 
> felt the need to write like 5000 words of this when talking the idea out with a friend
> 
> i know i have projects already going but,,, brain said no
> 
> enjoy some fish getting the therapy he honestly needs and deserves
> 
> enjoy!

You wake up. 

...wait, what?

Wake up? No, no, that can’t be right. You’re dead. You’ve been dead for what feels like eons. You don’t remember when you were last not-dead. Well, you do, but you’d prefer not to. Last time you were undead, your feet were planted on cool tile, and you had a wand levered at your best friend and her matesprit and then at your friend and then that friend woke back up from the dead and snapped your wand and ran at you with a chainsaw and…

Not fair. 

And also not a good thing to think of right now. Because it causes you to spin your head, and you end up lurching to the side and hurling, unsightly bile and all. Not a good look. You’re sure you look a wreck. And you don’t like that idea of looking a wreck. You try to sit up, but find yourself too weak to push yourself up. Your limbs feel heavy. Like you’re not corporeal. 

Are you… 

Alive?

You try and focus on your hands, but it’s a bit hard without your glasses. You seem to have lost them on the way here… wherever here was. You’d figure that out in a second, once you can see your hands… 

Shit. Real. You can feel the grass beneath you and everything. Shit. Shit, how are you alive right now?

You slowly press yourself up onto your forearms, groaning. Your stomach churns, and you hope you don’t throw up again, because really, it’d just be pathetic, and ugly. And you hated being either of those things. 

You pick your head up. 

And make direct eye contact with Feferi. 

Your entire world tips then, and yeah ok there you go, you throw up again, barely making it to the side. You’ve started shaking, and your vision blurs. Do you even have your glasses on? You can’t tell- no wait, fuck, you don’t, you don’t have them on, idiot. You just said that. The fuck are you on? Fuck, fuck, she’s right there, Fef is right there,  _ say something, say something! _

“Fef-” you stutter, but before you can get a word out after that, there are hands on you, yanking you up to your knees and then to your unstable feet. You feel way too solid, way too  _ alive,  _ it’s too much for you to handle, almost unbearably so. It’s too much, you haven’t seen Feferi since you killed her in cold blood, wait, no, you have to go back, you have to explain yourself, have to tell her you’re sorry, ask what in the  _ fuckin’ cod in hell were you fuckin’ thinkin’ chargin’ me like that- _

“Let go ‘a me,” you hiss as the hands holding you back keep hauling you backwards, “let  _ go ‘a me.” _

“...wave, wave a second,” Feferi speaks up, and you can see her form stumble to stand, and dear cod her voice, you haven’t heard her voice in forever, but hers is more grown, it’s deeper, it’s lost its innocence. “Wave, don’t-”

“FF.”

Your ice runs even colder as you hear that voice. Damnedly nasally, lisping voice, just nearby. You hear Feferi gasp, and her happy laugh, and you’ve no doubt they’re embracing right now, all cuddly and gross, and you try and grasp for your anger at that pissblooded mutant freak, try to grasp for your rage, your frustration, your desperation. 

But, you feel nothing. You can’t grab for anything because nothing is there. You feel hollow, empty, and confused. 

You cannot feel angry over Sollux and Feferi’s relationship anymore, because you hurt them both, playing a game that you lost terribly.

It’s the last thought you have before you’re thrown into a dark, cold, metal box, and the doors closed and you’re in the dark again. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please heed the tags.

The room is about seven units by ten units. As such, it’s larger than the average room, and more roomy due to the lack of furniture. 

However, it feels more akin to a fucking coffin, due to the people in it with you. 

Eleven people, exactly. You didn’t know where Gamzee was; frankly, you didn’t want to know where he’d fucked off to, and it didn’t look like anyone was begging the question of where either. Nepeta and Equius, attached at the hips even more now than they’d ever been, didn’t seem angry at the fact. They just seemed happy to be alive. A similar story to Tavros, though he looked a touch uncomfortable with Vriska’s presence, who was currently standing next to Terezi, as smug and bitchy as ever. 

You’re in a room full of old friends, old enemies. 

Feferi hasn’t looked at you, since you both woke up and started to panic. 

Karkat hasn’t  _ stopped  _ looking at you, and you don’t know which is worse. 

“So,” Kanaya says, and her voice is like another chainsaw to the guts, “welcome back, everyone.” She’s smiling almost, though she isn’t looking at you. 

Nepeta giggles and bounced on her feet next to Equius. “Thank mew!!! It’s all furry exciting!”

“I can’t believe I’m saying this,” Sollux says, lisp less prominent than it had ever been, “but I missed the cat puns.”

“THANK MEW!!! I bet you did! They will nefur go away, nefur efur,” Nepeta happily declares, holding onto Equius’s arm as she speaks. If you squint, you could hypothesize that Equius is smiling. Just a bit. 

“And the fish puns?” Feferi asked (ouch), which Sollux just tsks at and shrugs. “I’ll let it slide for now.”

“Aw, thanks Shoallux! I minnow you’d come around,” she giggles. 

Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. But you deserve it. You were never mad at her for loving Sollux, you were just mad she wouldn’t listen to your reasoning. It still didn’t make it hurt you less. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. 

“Soooooooo. Is there a reason why we’re all here? I thought you’d wanna go off galavanting with each other in an open fucking field, not a stuffy ballroom,” Vriska complains, flipping her hair behind her. It half hits Terezi, who bats at Vriska in annoyance. 

“Oh we will,” Kanaya tells her, somewhat terse, “but we wanted to gather all of the trolls in here to see each other properly and get situated. After all, we all get to live on Earth C now, as planned, and we want to be sure that everyone gets situated. For a proper happy ending.”

Nepeta squeals in delight. She’s clearly fired up, and hasn’t stopped smiling since you were led into the room by the two unknown trolls who took you here in the first place. You feel quite like a prisoner, which, really, is not comfortable, comforting, nor welcome, and you would demand better respect and care had you been in anyone else’s presence. You had been directed to sit. Everyone else was standing. You felt small, despite being one of the tallest in the room. Everyone else looks happy, or at least content enough, to be there. 

You’re not. 

The ramble of the room gets loud pretty loud, but not loud enough to drown out your suffocating thoughts. You feel trapped, and still confused. All you have been able garner is that you all had been resurrected, by someone’s good graces (Karkat’s, probably), and now you were here. No one talks to you. You don’t expect anyone to talk to you. You don’t see why they would. In fact, you’re almost relieved to be left alone, for once in your life, because you don’t know what you’d even say-

“Hey!”

You get slapped across the face. 

“Earth to fucking Ampora!”

You adjust your glasses and glance up from where you’re sitting. Karkat’s in front of you, a tablet in his hands. No one has even looked over to see the commotion, by pure chance, which is good luck because one,  _ ow,  _ and two,  _ ow, ow, ow,  _ and three, getting slapped by anyone, lowbloods especially, was embarrassing. An involuntary hiss escapes your lips, and you can’t force yourself to look up at him again. It’s painful, and the guilt and the memories of broken words and broken pacts are enough to make you feel slightly dizzy. 

“Hey,” Karkat says, voice still rough, but he’s a touch quieter. Your eyes slowly open as he nudges you with the tablet. “Look at me.”

You slowly do. Kar has… he’s grown, since you last saw him. Which is all but expected; he was alive, after all, when you weren’t. While you all had dropped here grown up, he’d been one of the ones to actually grow up. And your mind can’t help but point out the bluntness of his low-blooded nature, his mutant status you were now aware of. He radiated warmth, and his cheeks were tinted ever so softly with red. Could have mistaken him for a burgundy, were it not for his eyes. Bright red pupils, filling in with a sort of damning brilliance that begged you listen. 

Once upon a time, you may have killed him dead where he stood for  _ looking  _ like that. 

You feel vaguely nauseous again, because seriously, why’d it take you death and millenium to decide ‘hey, maybe saying I’d spare you and Kan really didn’t chalk up to my ideologies, and it literally took my eternity in the afterlife and so much time alone with my thoughts to realize that?’

You stare at each other for a short eternity before finally Karkat speaks. “I’ve never forgiven you. And I don’t think I really ever will.”

You swallow. 

But slowly nod. “Yeah.”

“...are you even sorry?”

...are you? Are you properly sorry like you should be? You so badly want to believe you are, but… you can’t say for sure you wouldn’t have done the same thing 

“...yes,” you answer, but you’re a beat too long. 

“You hesitated, you fucking hesitated. I can’t even believe to fathom why the fuck you hesitated, or why I even deemed it probably important to fucking stoop to your barkbeastshit, bulge-chafing, bloodcurdlingly ignorant, arrogant, hemocasteist, shitty ass fucking  _ level,  _ when I’ve existed just fine without you since you tipped half the fucking mission sideways.”

Neither of you say anything. 

“I should have stopped you,” he says, voice low and raspy, and you’re taken aback by his assertion. What? What would he have done, came in and tried to take you on himself? Fuck no! You, even then, were a seadweller, and he was most definitely not. He’d have died with the Feferi and Kanaya too. You try to say as much, but he just waves you off with the tablet. 

“I should have, I failed you, I failed everyone,” he lists, “and I’m sorry. Still doesn’t excuse that you were a stick in everyone’s ass that just kept going until it rammed everyone through, and I’m not above saying you’re up there with Gamzee in terms of people I despise beyond comprehension.”

_ Ow _ . 

“But I should have helped you,” he says, flip-flopping back and forth, but then again stops your interjection with a wave of the tablet. “Just… don’t fuck up this second chance, ok?” Karkat tells you, a drop of sincerity in his voice. “Don’t. Because there aren’t second chances  _ after  _ this.”

You open your mouth, desperate to get a word in edgewise, but Karkat shoves the tablet in your face instead. 

“I don’t need to hear your weak ass apology. I know you’re sorry, and I don’t need to hear it from you. You’d fuck the apology up,” his voice volume rises, so you quickly shut up and just take the tablet, desperate to not draw attention, attention of the variety that you didn’t yearn for in the slightest. 

“See that address?” You nod, staring at the address and the picture attached. “That’s where you’re living. No one wanted to fucking live with you, so you’re gonna be alone.”

You wince, and nod. 

“Don’t fucking be like that, you signed up when you decided to upgrade your Douche Card to the max level on whatever fucked up echeladder you have running in your scrambled fucking think pan. If Gamzee ever shows up again, you can live with him.” He takes the tablet back. “After we’re done here, we’ll drop everyone off. You’ll have cash and everything, because we won the fucking game (no thanks to you!) and are now somehow ostensibly loaded! Wow, who knew winning a shitty world and universe destroying game would result in fucking this! Really, who knew. You don’t deserve the cash, but if one more person dies of something other than old age on my watch I will launch myself into the nearest black hole that Paradox Space has to offer.”

You’re at least happy that Karkat’s running mouth hasn’t changed. 

“... fuck you,” he says lowly, as if for once, he didn’t want anyone else to hear. “...fuck you. Don’t fuck this up. Call me if you ever need me, understand?”

You don’t respond. 

“I said,  **_understand_ ** !?”

You quickly nod. 

“...ok. Be better.”

With that, Karkat stalks off to go talk to Aradia and Tavros. 

You try to find relief, but all you find is an aching void and the relentless desire to go back in time and shoot six sweep old you right in the fucking face. 

**Author's Note:**

> heehee should i keep posting this? lemme know
> 
> hope you are doing ok, drink water and allow yourself to smile today :)


End file.
